


Library) _. ( Weekly, $5.00 a Year 

No. 396. S 5 CtS. ) June 29, 1889. 

P^I'elTe VIK cpf 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 
IN EDUCATION. 


BY 


THE REV, c. B. HULBERT, D.D. 


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EDUCATION. 


I knew a man more than twice fourteen years ago 
(whether in the body or out, it matters little) who makes 
concerning his later student-life the following record : 

“ When in Andover Theological Seminary I spent a 
vacation in my native town ; and, being invited, dined on 
a certain day at the house of the leading physician of the 
place, the hint being given me at the time of the invitation, 
that there would be a few others present. On arriving at 
the doctor’s at an early hour, I was shown to the parlor 
and there introduced to a gentleman, the sole occupant of 
the parlor at the time, a gentleman whom I had never seen 
before, and whose name in the introduction, I failed to 
get. Afterwards I learned that he had been a guest in the 
family for a few days, and that it was in honor of him that 
the entertainment had been made. 

“ Being in advance of time, we were for more than an 
hour wholly by ourselves ; and in the conversation which 
immediately ensued between us, I soon perceived that I 
was in contact with no ordinary man. In his personal 
bearing, in the tones of his voice, the precision of his 
language and the coherence of his thought, I discovered 
enough to assure me that to maintain my part in the con- 
versation, I should be required to bring into requisition all 
the resources at my command. Intimidated, I yet plunged 
in, determined if I obtained no honor, yet to escape, if 
possible, from all chagrin. 

“ Hailing as I did from the famed School of the Prophets, 
our conversation very naturally took a semi-theological 
and scientific turn ; and we were soon discussing themes 
of the profoundest interest ; and, what by this time had 
become a matter of anxious concern with me, we had as- 
sumed opposite sides and the battle was joined. What did 
much to stagger me was his exceeding courtesy, which ex- 
tended so far as to be a prompt and magnanimous appre- 


6 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


ciation of the full force of all the arguments I presented. 
His magnanimity was as overwhelming as his logic. His 
words played on me with the gentleness of sunbeams, hut 
they came down upon my arguments as Samuel’s sword 
did upon Agag, — they were hewn in pieces. Nor did I 
derive any satisfaction from his courteously implied dis- 
tinction between me and what I had said. In my creed, I 
was one in honor with my arguments, and I could not see 
them assaulted and demolished under the strokes of his 
Damascus blade without myself feeling the steel. 

“I have said that he was courteous ; and so he was ; but 
his courtesy was of that cool and keen sort that goes un- 
mixed with mercy. He pursued me ; and he did it with 
the instinct of an inexorable logic. Though he saw me 
to be disconcerted and discomfited, and beleaguered and 
bewildered and benighted, he refused to relax ; and never 
concluded till he gave me the conclusion, that his sole ob- 
ject in following me up with such a merciless rigor, was 
to teach me never again to make a statement that was not 
accurate, adduce an argument that was unsound, or affirm 
an opinion that was not well considered. Be his object 
what it may, certainly this was the lesson taught me — a 
lesson which it cost him less to give than it did me to re- 
ceive, but a lesson that has been worth more to me than it 
cost ; for never before nor since have I suffered a parallel 
mortification at the hands of any man. 

“ It might be supposed that I felt some relief, and was 
more reconciled to my lot, when on getting out of his 
hands I found him to be Judge Hoar of the Supreme 
Bench of Massachusetts. But no : this knowledge that my 
discomfiture had come from one of the most astute and ac- 
complished jurists in the land, did nothing to hide from 
my view the appalling disclosure which he had made to 
me of my utter weakness in debating the questions which 
we had had in hand. 

“ This contest it was that taught me, as never before I 
had been taught, how much depends upon what a man is, 
in distinction from what a man has acquired from books 
and observation. The consideration that took possession 
of me as I saw my arguments giving way, as seemingly 
they did, under the Judge’s easy assault, was, not simpjy 
that I ought to have acquired more knowledge and been 
better equipped in material for the discussion, but, more 
fundamentally, that there was not enough of me. 
Be it that the right sort of stuff had been put into me to 


IN EDUCATION. 


7 


begin with, and that what I had of substance of being was 
not out of proportion and defective, still I felt that there 
was an appalling lack in quantity o f substance. So far 
from its being a gratification to me, it was a positive mor- 
tification to remember that I had read a good many books, 
and studied a good many sciences, and acquired some 
knowledge : the point that cut sharper than a serpent’s 
tooth was that all this reading and studying and acquired 
knowledge had accomplished so little for me in reduplica- 
ting and enlarging the subject-matter of my being. As I 
stood staggering under the blows of the Judge’s logic, it 
was no time for me to take comfort in the reflection that I 
had gone through with a course of study at the Academy, 
and at the College, and was in a professional school. ‘ All 
the worse for you, young man,’ would the Judge have 
said, turning his benignant but searching eyes upon me, 
‘ if you have enjoyed all these advantages you speak of, 
and they have left you where I have found you.’ ” 

But enough, and perhaps too much, of this personal 
reference. It is with a view to an advantageous approach 
to my theme, that I have cited this record of individual 
experience. In his contest with the jurist, the student, as 
he states, felt the existence of such inequality ; that his 
antagonist was so incomparably above him — another order 
of being — that what was needed in him to hold an equal 
argument, was to be taken up and back to the Being who 
made him for reconstruction and re-endowment, and that his 
Maker be induced, if he please, in doing this work to put 
a good deal more, i f_not better material into him. Possi- 
bly many others, as well as he, have thought that this 
w T ould be the most direct and expeditious way of becom- 
ing what they would like to be. The only difficulty is its 
impossibility. We have no account of its ever having been 
done. And for the best of reasons ; since as God made us 
we were well made and pronounced by Him “ very 
good ; ” and he never confesses to a failure by doing his 
work over again. Let us remember that in creating, he 
put into each of us a given amount of being, or capital 
stock — inlay of physical, mental and moral substance ; nor 
can we go back on him in complaint, and murmur because 
be did not more richly and amply endow us with original 
gifts. For a little thoughtful self-inspection will assure 
any one of us, that in spite of our littleness, there is a good 
deal in us ; and that included in what we are, and surpass- 
ing in excellence, if possible, all other original endow- 


8 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


ments, is that extraordinary capacity general inhering in 
all our capacities particular, and which we all have in 
equal degree, the capacity of growth. 

Let us concede That the most marvellous phenomenon in 
our world is life — life in its gradational stages : first in the 
plant and tree, giving us the vegetable kingdom ; next, in 
the animal, which gives us the kingdom of sentient exist- 
ence, mounting and crowning the preceding inanimate one; 
and finally, life in man, the divine afflatus, for God 
breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and man be- 
came a living — undying, immortal — soul ; and whose is 
the kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the king- 
dom under the whole heaven. 

Now next after life in this ascending scale of living 
things, the most marvellous phenomenon is that inherent 
and inevitable attribute of all life known to us, and with- 
out which life cannot be conceived to exist — I mean growth; 
the capacity which living things have of self-development, 
self- renew al and self -advance ; for “ unless a man can 
erect himself above himself, how mean a thing is man ! ” 
What less than a miracle, an oak bursting from the acorn ; 
or from an egg, the Bird of Paradise ; or the development 
from a New Hampshire cradle, of the Great Defender of 
the Constitution ? Nothing can be more wonderful this 
side of life itself than its attribute — growth; which is a forth- 
putting and expansion of the living organism itself by the 
law of the mystery of the life within it. Inorganic objects 
increase in size, but mechanically by a process of accretion, 
super-additions made by outside agencies ; but this is not 
growth, which is always vivific. A tree is not the product 
of a process of external adhesions from without; it is from 
the unfolding of an original germ inlaid in the seed by the 
creative fiat. 

Now man is a living creature ; and all the powers with 
which he is endowed by his Creator are living powers and 
have the capacity of growth. His constituent elements do 
not abide in him inactive and changeless. They are not a 
heap or a pile. Their relation is not that of juxtaposition, 
like apples in a basket or like stars in a constellation. 
They are organically and vitally affiliated, alternately 
means and ends to each other. Therefore man presents 
himself to the observer as a unique whole, a unity of life 
replete with capacity of growth. 

In Christianity we have a Gospel for sinful men ; in this 
capacity to grow we have one for weak men, meagrely 


IN EDUCATION. 


9 


endowed men, men who feel as the student felt when 
going to pieces under “ the oak-splitting thunderbolts ” of 
the Judge. For let us know, that the difference among 
men is not a difference in the number of their physical, 
intellectual, and moral powers. Lord Bacon had no more 
constituent elements in his being than the cook that pre- 
pared his food. It is not true that one man has one talent 
and another two and another five, except as you mean that 
one man’s powers are to another man’s, in point of 
strength, in the ratio of one to two and two to five. Which 
signifies that a man, having a full complement of faculties, 
may be a very small man since his faculties are very small ; 
while another man, with the same number of faculties, 
may be a very great man because his faculties are great. 
The point of interest here is not that of number, but of 
magnitude. 

Consider now the good news that comes to us in the 
gospel of growth. We need not despair because we find 
that we have not much powe r in our p owers or faculty in 
our faculties ; for since our powers and faculties have the 
capacity of growth, we c an pu t them in. We can put 
power into our powers, capacitylnto our capacities. And 
here we fall upon man’s royal prerogative. Here we catch 
a glimpse of the possibilities that are in him. Standing in 
the presence of this fact inciting us to effort, shall we be- 
wail the impossibility of betaking ourselves to the Being who 
made us to have him re-endow us with larger and richer 
resources ? Let us rather instantly apply ourselves under 
a benign Providence and with the facilities at hand, to the 
work of developing the powers we have. We can make 
them wax mightily if we wish. 

And consider that in this development we secure what 
is involved in the idea of education. This term is derived 
from a Latin word ( educo , educare, educatum) which 
means to train up as a child, to rear and to culture ; and it 
is etymologically one with another Latin word ( e-duco , 
educereTeductum) which means to lead forth, to draw out. 
This makes the distinctive idea in education to be educ- 
tion. It implies the existence in man of latent germs, pro- 
perties, capacities— call them by what term you please— 
which in a process of disciplinary training need to be de- 
veloped. We are told that “ under the rings and scales of 
the caterpillar there lie, all folded up and hidden from 
view, the gorgeous wings of the butterfly.” In proper 
conditions, this repulsive worm of the dust becomes the 


10 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


beautiful emblem of our immortality beating about us in 
the sunbeams. So we are told that “ we shall find even 
in the apple-seed, if we examine it with a powerful micro- 
scope, the elements of the future tree. The massive trunk, 
the wide-spreading branches, the far-reaching roots with 
their thousands of fibres and spongeoles, all appear in dis- 
tinct and well-defined outline to the eye of science. The 
fertile soil, the gentle rains and the sunshine do not change 
the nature of the seed or endow it with any new proper 
ties ; they only feed it and warm it ; supply it with the 
conditions of development ; the whole process of growtli 
by assimilation is its own. Its development into a tree is 
the result of its own mysterious vitality. It drinks in its 
nourishment from the ground, inhales it from the air, and 
so grows from within outwardly. It asks no more than 
this, that the soil it grows in be nourishing and watered, 
that it have air and heat ; all the rest it does for itself.” 
Now when a tree, under these conditions, is developed, 
we may say of it that it has received its eduction ; and 
that eduction is its education. An oak is simply an edu- 
cated acorn. Hence we may say of any living thing that 
it is educated when there has been unfolded and de- 
veloped in completeness the germ-principle lodged in it by 
its Creator. 

And consider that it is just this result which is secured 
in a man in his education. Enfolded in him are latent 
and dormant energies, “ germinant and springing,” which 
require to be educated, brought forth in the amplitude of 
their capacity. 

Observe how this definition of education as an educing 
force applies to man as a physical being. Wrapped up 
in every physical organ, there are latent germs of power 
which need development and enlargement. To secure this 
result the body must be subjected to those forms of vigor- 
ous, hardening, toughening exercises fitted to secure it. 
And be it remembered that this education of the physical 
pomirs_js__never secured vicariously and from without ; 
not by anything that is done for the man, or upon the 
man, but by him and in him. He cannot get physical de- 
velopment as a legacy. If he has it, he has it as a product 
which he has worked up and out of seed-germs inlaid in 
his aboriginal physical constitution. At this point as else- 
where Nature shows no favoritism. If the Prince of 
Wales wants a strong, vigorous body he must get it by 
paying the vulgar price of personal exercise and exertion , 


IN EDUCATION. 


11 


and just about the amount of it required too, in his earning 
his own bread, in the sweat of his own brow, and digging 
in his own mother earth. He can have it by no way of 
royalty ; by no outlay from his exchequer. Does he want 
power in his arm ? let him seek it by wielding the sledge- 
hammer ; does he want it in his eye ? let him stand by the 
side of the sea-captain on the quarter-deck. 

By this analogical approach, it is not difficult to see that 
the education of the human mind is the eduction, the 
evolution — evocation, if you prefer — of the hidden re- 
sources of might inlaid by its Creator in its native constitu- 
ent powers. 

Here let us accept the affirmation, — “ My mind to me a 
kingdom is.” The soul has the magnitude of an empire. 
Or shall we call it a very Pantheon, each power nobler and 
grander than pagan god ? Its powers, though unde- 
veloped, have a futurity and potentiality absolutely immeas- 
urable. In hugeness and massive splendor they tower 
higher than Bierstadt’s “Domes of the Yosemite,” and 
are invested with a more mysterious and impenetrable 
glory. Take the power of thought, charging man with 
the destiny of an eternal contemplation of God and his 
works ; then the powers of reason, inspection, analysis, in- 
duction, judgment, forecast ; and, attendant upon these, 
memory, will, imagination, conscience, taste, and sensi- 
bility. 

Now it is clear that the education of the mind is the de- 
velopment in symmetry and harmony of the inherent and 
latent capabilities of these several powers ; a result secured 
no otherwise than as they are taken by the man who has 
them and put to the drill of a thorough-going and exacting 
discipline. Man accomplishes nothing in the outward 
world of discovery and invention that can be once com- 
pared with the results which he achieves within himself. 
The subject himself is the object of expenditure. His 
hands are upon his own soul, and these leave their impress. 
In this struggle of self-discipline, the will puts form its 
power to achieve, as in no other instance of human en- 
deavor. God has ordained that it should be so ; and in 
accordance with the utterance of the old Greek pofct, Hesiod, 
when he said, “ The gods have placed sweat in the path- 
way to excellence.” For instance, does a man wish to ac- 
quire power to strike a blow with his arm of a degree of 
force not now possible to him ? how shall he do it ? Only 
by one way ; let him use the power he now has in his 


12 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


arm, and continue to use it, augmenting it with every 
stroke, until he can strike with the desired force. Use the 
power you have if you want more ; use it normally, use it 
up to the point of bearing and not beyond. This is the 
law of development by use ; and to deny this law is to 
confront a divine decree. 

Observe how this same law reappears in the realm of 
mind, and with a more imperial majesty according as mind 
is an advance upon matter. Does the person who has aug- 
mented the strength of his arm by use, wish to gain acces- 
sions of mental power such as he has not, and whereby he 
can take up and read with interest and delight the master 
productions of human genius, such as Bacon’s Novum 
Organum, or Butler s Analogy or Edwards’s Treatise on the 
Will — how can he do it ? By adhering to this law of de- 
velopment by use. Let him treat his mind as he has treated 
his arm ; put iTTo drill on an ascending grade of difficult 
themes of study, and let him keep it there at work until 
he has developed mental brawn and muscle enough to do 
it ; and let him not be discouraged though he be required to 
begin with Watts’s “ Hymns for Infant Minds.” Or does 
he wish to develop his logical faculty so that he can cope 
successfully with one of the giant reasoners of the land ? 
then let him put his brain into the gymnasium of the 
mathematics, and impose upon it the most exacting de- 
mands, grappling and mastering difficulties of giant pro- 
portion, until he has brought it into such subjection to his 
will, and given it such acuteness, and force, and compre- 
hensive grasp, as to justify the hope of success in so bold 
an adventure. 

I think I cannot be misunderstood. This I mean and 
nothing short of it : if you wish to develop physical 
power, put your physical organs to drill ; if you seek to 
bring your mental powers up to a high degree of efficiency, 
put them to work, and upon studies that will tax them to 
the uttermost. When one has been mastered, take a sec- 
ond, and a third ; and so go on conquering and to con- 
quer, victory succeeding victory in your march to mental 
conquests and triumphs. If you want to be a giant-killer 
in theareha of public debate, get into the habit of killing 
giants in the retirement of the study. Oh, how it needs to 
be understood by every one of us, and especially by every 
student in the land, that every difficulty encountered and 
overcome, whether it be a hard problem in algebra, or a 
difficult lesson in Xenophon, or a conflict with poverty, or 


IN EDUCATION. 


IB 


an assault of despondency, adds so much to the stock of 
one’s manhood ! It was to enforce this very conception of 
the educing power of an education, that a distinguished 
American educator summons to his aid the superstition of 
the savage, Otaheitan, who imagined that the strength 
and valor of the stalwart enemy whom he slew in battle 
passed into himself ; a pagan fancy which Wordsworth 
has thus happily expressed — 

“ So the wild Tartar, when he spies 
A man that is handsome, valiant, wise, 

If he can kill him, thinks to inherit 
His wit, his beauty and his spirit.” 

But what was a cruel superstition in the savage, is to the 
scholar a profound reality; since whenever a difficulty con- 
fronts him having in it an hundred degrees of resistance, 
and he overcomes it, he augments proportionately his con- 
quering power. A man is as many times a man as he has 
mastered sciences. Here is a fact that suggests the dignity 
of a law in mental growth. Be it known that it is through 
their fidelity to this idea of education as a reduplicating 
disciplinary work that teachers of all grades, and at what- 
ever posts of service, are accomplishing their great results. 
And it is by acceding to it that students who at the outset 
were greatly discouraged and often in despair, have so 
’augmented the substance of their being, that they have ap- 
peared afterwards, at the close of their school-days, giving 
evidence — to use the words of Shakespeare — “ of an edge 
of wit set upon them, more than they (or their friends) 
ever dreamed they had brain to grind it on.” 

I have said that in order to develop our physical powers 
we must put them to drill ; but I have not said in what 
form, whether in labor on the farm or in the home, or in 
the shop ; whether on the playground, in the military 
drill, in boating, or in the gymnasium; nor need I insist, if 
so be that the exercise, in this form or that, accord with 
the nature of the body and be sufficiently exacting. So in 
mental discipline. It is a matter of no essential moment 
upon what studies the mind be put to drill, or in what 
form, provided they be in harmony with its nature, and 
fitted to its degree of discipline— the mind always taxed in 
an advance movement to do its best, the taxation carried 
up towards but never beyond the point of bearing. 

However, it would be a sad neglect and a great ingrati- 
tude not to notice just here a signal illustration of the 
Divine Benevolence ; for it is obvious that God has so con- 


14 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


ditioned us in this world that a happy coincidence exists 
between the fact that our physical manhood must be de- 
veloped and made healthful and strong by physical exer- 
cise and exertion, and that other fact, correlate to it, that 
just about this form and amount of work is required to 
supply ourselves with the necessities and conveniences of 
life. Hence to the vast majority of men it is not demanded 
of them, in their physical exercise, to spend their strength 
•for naught. Their toil brings them a two-fold remunera- 
tion ; it develops the body and gives it health and vigor, 
and, meanwhile, accumulates the material for its suste- 
nance and comfort. While comparatively a small propor- 
tion of the community — students and persons of indoor 
and sedentary habits — may require forms of exercise that 
bring no pecuniary return, the great majority pursue in 
life those forms of labor that bring them both health and 
supply. Physical health and strength, therefore, are not 
sought for commonly as an end. They come incidentally 
in the attempt to gain a good that lies beyond them. It is 
a reasonable question whether the race would not long 
since have become extinct, if all physical exercise and exer- 
tion had been imposed solely for the good which they 
themselves confer. In the present constitution of things, 
the best physical development and health accrue from 
labor prosecuted under the stimulus of a remuneration 
that lies beyond the labor and which we would fain secure in 
spite of it. A walk for its own sake may be of service; 
but if taken with the mind diverted from the thought of 
physical benefit, and stimulated by some ulterior object, as 
when on some errand, or seeking some mountain view, or 
in hunting, fishing, the physical benefit will be all the 
greater. 

"The same principle holds in regard to mental discipline. 
A study may be entered upon and prosecuted for the direct 
and sole object of intellectual culture ; but except as such 
study may awaken in the mind of the student an interest 
all its own, it will be neither prolonged nor successful. 
Here, as in physical training, God has established a beauti- 
ful harmony between mental culture and the utility of 
those studies which we are wont to pursue in our schools 
of learning in order to obtain it. As when we work, so 
when we study, we need not spend our strength for naught. 
Our minds are developed successfully in pursuing subjects 
that give us knowledge of practical worth. Our mental 
exertions, therefore, reward us in two ways ; while they 


IN EDUCATION. 


15 


expand and Strengthen the mind, they do it by making 
those acquisitions which we utilize in our daily life. As 
that exercise of body is the most healthful which is taken 
under the stimulus of a good higher than a physical one, 
so that form of study is the most educating and ennobling 
which is pursued under incentives to an end higher than 
simple education itself. It needs to be known that man’s 
highest end is not secured if sought for in himself. As a 
finite dependent spirit, he is to pay over all he is and has as 
a contribution into the treasury of his Father. 

In contradistinction from' all labors of body or mind put 
forth with a view to utility, as distinguished from disci- 
pline, we revert to the fact that in the work of education 
itself, distinctively considered, we seek for results in the 
man. In simple physical training, the objective benefit is 
not remuneration but discipline ; not to accumulate the 
material we live on, but to increase and strengthen the 
material we are. So the ultimate object of all disciplinary 
mental training is not to amass knowledge, but to enlarge 
and sharpen the intellectual powers of those who amass it. 
This is saying that in our education proper, we pursue the 
sciences, not so much for the sciences themselves, as for 
the good that will accrue from the stark pursuit. In this 
work of self-equipment we are preparing our mental 
powers for practical service in life, just as a mechanic 
grinds and sharpens the tools with which he is to work. 
Could we -expect a horse to succeed in the trotting-park 
which has not been thoroughly broken in, and trained 
under the most approved and exacting methods of disci- 
pline ? How are young men equipped for service for the 
ball-ground or for the boat-race ? Is it not by a prolonged 
and most rigid training whereby every joint, ligament, 
tendon, and muscle is developed to its utmost capacity ? 
In the same way the mind cannot be trusted to render 
efficient service if undeveloped and void of discipline. 

From all this it appears that education, properly consid- 
ered, and the accumulation of knowledge, while commonly 
coincident are by no means necessarily identical. It is 
not absurd to speak of an unlearned education. For noth- 
ing is more obvious to us than the fact that a man may have 
a really good education in the true sense of the term, with- 
out having acquired a great deal of knowledge. So it is 
not infrequent that we find men whose minds are well 
stored with knowledge while they have but a little educa- 
tion. Their minds are sponge-like, and have a quick recep- 


16 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


tivity, but little power to transmute knowledge into them- 
selves, and so get the good of it. They are men who dis- 
close the anomaly of an educated ignorance. The question 
which men raise in their intercourse, one with another, is 
not, how much does such a man know ? but, how much is 
he ? Any one of us would much sooner be the man who 
is the most, than the man who knows the most. This fact 
assures us that the object of an education is not primarily 
to increase what a man knows, but to augment what a man 
is. 


This suggests the service to be accomplished by study. 
And by this term I do not mean time passed in leisurely 
elegance or mental vagrancy. It is that form of exertion 
significantly expressed by the college phrase of “boning 
down.” I mean study that is intense and concentrated ; 
study that is severe, vigorous, and unrelenting. It is of 
such study that discipline is born. It is not found in the 
flowery path of indolence and ease. Genius is no substi- 
tute for it. To acquire it, the scholar, beguiled by the 
charms of learning, is tempted to prosecute his studies into 
midnight vigils, often till the day -dawn smites his eye-lids 
and pales his faithful lamp. That young man among us or 
elsewhere, who is ambitious to sing in immortal verse, or 
to teach in the schools of philosophy, or to stand at nature’s 
secret altar-fires, her high-priest forever to all comers ; oi 
who aspires to sway with burning periods the popular as- 
sembly, or decree judicial decisions, or guide statesman- 
ship and diplomacy ; or who would fain charm our even- 
ing hours with sweet fancies, or conduct us along the 
mighty galleries of history, under her crumbling arches 
and amidst the monumental piles which “ Wizard Time 
hath raised to count his ages by,” — I say, the young man, 
in this assembly or out of it, who aspires to such elevation, 
must seek it in a discipline acquired at the cost of tre- 
mendous study. Where, how, or in what pursuits, this 
discipline is secured, is a matter of minor moment. Of 
one mistake, however, you will permit me to dispossess 
you, if by chance, you have made it ; this discipline is not 
confined to our schools of learning. Many a young man, 
in the struggle of a laborious manual occupation, is doing 
more to develop his energies and “ to give the world the 
assurance of a man ” than many a student whose name 
is enrolled in the catalogue of the best University in the 
land. Let it be given — a young man in Harvard ; I find in 
this fact no decisive proof that he is getting an education 


IN EDUCATION 


17 


superior to that which some stalwart youth is, meanwhile, 
acquiring on some rough New Hampshire farm. The 
plow-boy may be surpassing him in every form of in- 
tellectual and moral culture. Be it known, that that per- 
son is educating himself the best, other things being equal, 
be it that he is in school or out, in a law office, in a store, 
in a shop, or on a farm, who is adhering with the most 
rigid exactitude to the mandates of his physical, mental, 
and moral needs in intense and persistent thinking. It is 
Thinking that does the deed ; Time has crowned him 
King. 

Let me assure you here that good, roundabout common 
sense has never been superseded by the college diploma. 
Alma Mater is no match yet for Mother Wit. Nothing is 
more common than to see our so-called educated men, 
that is, our academy-trained and college-bred men, sur- 
passed in mental and moral power, and out-distanced in 
the race of life, by men who have known little if anything 
of our set forms of school training. In taking an inven- 
tory of a man, it is a matter of trivial moment, to know 
whether he graduated from this or that preparatory school, 
or any preparatory school ; from this college, or that col- 
lege, or any college ; the plain blunt question which the 
world asked yesterday, and has been asking to-day and 
will ask to-morrow, is, What of the man ? How much is 
there of him, and to him, and in him ? What can he do ? 
do in fields of labor ? do at the bed-side of the patient, in 
the pulpit and at the bar ? This is the question of our 
times ; and it is a fair, honest question. The popular test 
is making havoc of diplomas and certificates. It says not, 
Tell us the educational groove the young man has been 
sliding in and which he lias slid through ; it’s demand is, 
whether he hails from this school, or that school, or no 
school ; whether he comes from a mansion or a cottage or 
a log hut— Put him on the scales and let us weigh him ; let 
us know for ourselves what there is of him, and to him, 
and in him— not in avoirdupois, but in Troy weight. The 
question is not, Have you studied Arithmetic, Algebra, 
Geometry, Astronomy, Latin, Greek, French, German ; 
but if you have studied these branches of knowledge, What 
have they done for you f— not, Have you graduated from 
Harvard or Yale or Dartmouth ? but if you have gradua- 
ted from either of these schools of learning, What has your 
college done for you ? 

Friends, some things are beginning to be settled ; and 


18 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


among them this thing : a man may be a Cincinnatus, and 
abandon his plow in the furrow to sway the sceptre of an em- 
pire, and guide her through the storm ; he may be a porter 
at the door of a London theatre, and rise to surpass every 
competitor in the matchless productions of his genius ; he 
may be a journeyman printer in Boston, and send his 
kite into the crackling skies, and compel the light- 
nings of heaven to yield to his untutored philosophy ; he 
may be a blacksmith at the forge in Worcester, Massa- 
chusetts, and become the match of any linguist in the Uni- 
versities of Europe ; he may be a shoemaker in Natick, 
and become a master-spirit in the American Senate ; yea, 
he may be a long, lank, and lathy rail-splitter at the AVest, 
who, buttressed by a tanner of hides, lays successfully his 
potent hands upon the destinies of the American Republic 
in hurling back the invading foe when the floodgates of re- 
bellion are burst and her winds are up. Men are in demand ; 
not homines, animals that wear pants, but viri, plumed 
knights, with swords upon their thighs ; scholars and 
specialists they may be, if back of scholarship and spe- 
cialty there is manhood enough to bear up under them and 
put them to service. Men, I repeat, are the demand ; men 
of independent and profound thought, of rational and de- 
termined purpose, and of executive force ; and the world 
is taking men wherever she can And them. She insists 
with intense emphasis that they be educated in the true, 
and not spurious, sense of the term ; that is, that they have 
their capacities so developed and in culture and under 
command that they can put them to service. The farmer 
can handle with facility his axe and hoe and scythe ; so 
the mechanic will take his auger and put it down at a 
given point and bore, and bring his saw successfully to the 
scratch ; all these implements are quick to obey the touch 
of their masters. This suggests the sovereign authority 
which an educated man has over himself. It is illustrated 
in the instance of Daniel Webster’s use of his powers and 
acquisitions in repelling, in the United States Senate, the 
assaults of Gen. Havne, the cliampian nullifier of the South, 
in a speech that has no equal in modern statesmanship. In 
the trial of Warren Hastings, Edmund Burke exhibited the 
same mastery over his powers. It finds an equal illustration 
in the eloquent outburst of Patrick Henry on the occasion 
of the Declaration of Independence. But the value of a 
disciplined mind appears not more in these signal illustra- 
tions of its worth, than in instances of everyday life that are 


IN EDUCATION. 


19 


familiar to us all. Any man who has such command over 
his powers and acquisitions that he can combine them in a 
battalion for instant service in the field of inquiry or in- 
vention or of argument, is so far forth an educated man. 
He is educated because his powers have been educted and 
combined, and they move at his command in the round- 
ness and compactness and often with the celerity of a can- 
non ball. He is not educated because so much knowledge 
has been acquired, but because this knowledge, having 
been acquired, has evoked and trained and put to service 
his latent energies. Acquired knowledge and manhood 
are not identical ; just as food and physical power are not 
one and the same. As it is not the food that a man eats that 
sustains his physical life ; but the food which, having been 
eaten, is digested and assimilated — converted into chyle 
and blood and bone and muscle ; so it is not the knowl- 
edge which a man gets into the receptacle of his mind that 
educates him ; but the knowledge which, having been re- 
ceived there, is digested and assimilated ; transmuted, as 
it were, into his own mental substance. Digested food is 
flesh and blood ; digested knowledge is educed mental 
power. There is a theory of education which lays the 
emphasis upon knowledge acquired, and not mental sub- 
stance enlarged. It is the sap-bucket idea ; the pupil 
waddles up under a spouting teacher to be filled. The 
significant fact here is that the bucket remains what it was. 
No energies have been evoked. Some would make the 
mind a mint ; the golden ingots of knowledge are poured 
into it and fused, and then coined with its image and super- 
scription upon it. But this figure, while more elevated 
and inviting, is no advance upon the preceding one. It 
leaves the mind unchanged. We revert therefore to na- 
ture’s symbols. What is an educated apple-seed ? An 
apple tree. What an educated apple-blossom ? An apple. 
What is an educated mind ? A mind developed in fulness. 
Now what the sunbeams and the rains and the dews and 
the breezes and the soil do, in bringing the apple-seed and 
the apple-blossom to maturity, just that service is rendered 
by knowledge acquired and used, in bringing the mind to 
maturity. Knowledge is sunlight pouring into the blossom 
of the mind ; its product is the developed mental germs. 

It is interesting to notice how our synonym for knowl- 
cdge — information — in its etymology, vindicates this view 
of education. To inform a thing is to form it in the in- 
side. Here is my felt hat ; how can I change the form of 


20 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


its crown ? I can take a needle and put it into shape, 
working on the outside ; but this is not informing it. But 
if I put my hand on the inside and thus give it shape, I have 
informed it. So powerful is knowledge to affect the mind 
itself, to give it development and shape, that it is called 
information ; that is, the name of the effect which knowl- 
edge has on the mind, has been given to knowledge itself, 
its cause. Here is an instance where etymology comes in 
to lend a helping hand in rebuking a most hurtful popular 
misconception. The value of knowledge is not found in 
its power while undigested to puff the mind ; but, when 
digested, to edify it. Knowledge does for the mind what 
incubation does for the egg. As the acorn is informed and 
edified into an oak by an appropriate environment, so the 
mind of man, put into right relation to an external world 
of knowledge and truth, expands and reaches towards its 
completeness. When Bacon says “that knowledge is 
power,” he means knowledge that has been thus transub- 
stantiated. Knowledge must be wedded to the soul, and 
the twain become one. Phaeton’s horses must be hitched 
to his chariot. Who of us have not known men who have 
amassed vast stores of knowledge, but who have very little 
personal power ? One of the best students I have ever 
known, was a man of ordinary ability. His power to ab- 
sorb knowledge from books was enormous. The room in 
college where he studied was a sort of pantry where he 
gormandized ; and every call of his professor in the class- 
room to recite, was an emetic successfully administered. 
You can empty a bucket of its contents quicker than you 
can a strawberry blossom. 

In this view of education, it follows that that teacher is 
doing the best work for his pupils, other things being 
equal, not who imparts the most knowledge, but who, in 
the knowledge he does impart, does the most to wake up 
their minds and incite them to think for themselves. The 
distinctive work of the teacher, is the ringing of a rising- 
bell in the dormitory of the soul. 

In laying the emphasis in education upon this disciplin- 
ary idea, I am not disparaging, but commending, our 
established methods of school training. By no means 
would I incline any of you to place a low estimate upon 
an educational institution of whatever grade. And yet I 
will confess to an attempt to modify somewhat public 
opinion as to one point. I would have you to conceive of 
this world more than you are wont to do as being itself a 


IN EDUCATION. 


21 


vast University whose spirit and discipline is comprehended 
under the term, Common Sense. We are all supposed to 
be members of it, our birth being our matriculation ; and 
since it is pre-eminently a school of common sense, we 
never want it understood that we have graduated from it. 
It is conceded now that within the vast and general institu- 
tion there are subordinate ones called High Schools, 
Academies, Colleges, Universities ; and matters are so ar- 
ranged that students, belonging to this larger and broader 
institution, can, without impairing their standing, enter if 
they will one of these low-grade schools, and thus be mem- 
bers of both institutions at one and the same time. This 
dual course of study is not optional for all ; not a few must 
limit their advantages to what they can get in the Uni- 
versity of Common Sense ; but they are to be congratulated 
as having privileges incomparably greater than those who, 
limited by natural defects, belong solely to one of those 
subordinate schools without the option of being in the 
Other and Higher. This suggests the range of choice com- 
monly accorded to students, in these recent times, in op- 
tional studies. By all means, then, whenever it is prac- 
ticable, let the student avail himself of this double form of 
instruction. While it is obvious that multitudes of men 
secure to themselves an admirable education in the Uni- 
versity of Common Sense, yet this fact militates not against 
our conventional institutions, since students in these fre- 
quently find the advantages of this University enhanced by 
them. Our American Senate is honored and graced by 
the erudition and scholarly culture of our Vermont Senators, 
neither of whom has enjoyed the advantages of what is 
vulgarly known as a college course. Their training and 
culture have been confined to the university studies of which 
I have spoken ; and, undoubtedly, much to their regret, 
as we may infer from their studious efforts to promote the 
prosperity of institutions whose advantages they were re- 
quired to forego. Let me not then commit the wrong of 
inclining any of you to undervalue the college. As an 
Annex organically connected with the University of Com- 
mon Sense, its worth is above all possible estimate. 
Availed of, in the proper order, it furnishes advantages for 
the developing and strengthening of the mental and moral 
powers of man such as we find nowhere else. 

There is a favorite term in popular use which is vitiating 
beyond measure ; not in itself, but in its implication. We 
are fond of calling certain men, who have reached emi- 


* i- 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


nence, self-made men. And so they are ; but they must 
not be so named in contradistinction from other educated 
men. In fact, no men are self-made, in the sense that they 
make themselves independently of environment. But in 
the sense in which certain eminent men are said to be self- 
made, in that very sense we may say that all eminent men 
are self-made. My definition of education as the product 
of that which is not done/or the man and upon the man, but 
by the man and in him, forbids this popular distinction. 
There is no truth that is correspondent to it. Within all 
the limitations in which the term can properly be used, 
we can say, with absolute truth, that any man who is made, 
is self-made. Daniel Webster, a graduate of Dartmouth 
College, was as really a self-made man as Henry Clay, who 
never went to college. It is true that there is a difference 
in the educational environment of men who were educated 
at college and who were not ; but this difference of envi- 
ronment does not reappear in a corresponding difference in 
the education which men get. George F. Edmunds may 
have got as much out of his environment in a Vermont 
Academy and in the study and early practice of his profes- 
sion at Burlington, as George F. Hoar did out of his Harvard 
training and professional studies — who knows ? and yet to 
call the one a self-made man, and the other not, confronts 
the first principles of common sense. Possibly Mr. Ed- 
munds would have reached a higher eminence, had he used 
Harvard University as his stair-case of ascent ; but who, 
having the power, would indulge in the perilous venture 
of making the slightest change in the line of study and 
mode of discipline which he did adopt ? Is there not 
something in the free and spontaneous mode in which a 
mind develops itself in the University of Common Sense, if 
it will only find motive in it enough to do it, that makes it 
the very best for that mind ? Is there not something in 
the rigid groove-life of our educational systems that tends 
to artificiality, and therefore to such a construction of the 
moulded product as to so cramp the original make of the 
mind as to force it to lose its identity ? If so, then the 
product is a monstrosity ; a caricature upon what God 
intended. Were a John Bunyan or a Robert Burns to be 
entrusted in his youth to any existing University, would 
you not exclaim, — “ Be careful how you lay hands on this 
youth : disturb not the peculiar bent of his genius ; if you 
cannot guide in a pure and unconstrained development, 
leave him to himself : we cannot afford to surrender the 


IN EDUCATION. 


23 


author of the Pilgrim’s Progress or of Tam O’Shanter”? 
If our schools of learning have been instruments of un- 
speakable good to thousands, we may also express the con- 
viction that to not a few they have been an injury. May 
we not often say, — 

“ Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ; 

Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, 

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre ; ” 

but he committed himself in his youth to an institution 
which, true to its false theory, instead of seeking to de- 
velop his natural gifts in harmonious proportions, adven- 
tured upon a reconstruction of him after its own ideal, and 
thus destroyed him ? You cannot charge that 

“ Chill Penury repressed his noble rage, 

And froze the genial current of his soul;” 

it was the conceit of educators who, instead of developing 
God’s work, assumed the right to do it over again. It is 
sometimes said of an institution, as though in commenda- 
tion of its work, that all its graduates come out of it, as 
coins do out of the Philadelphia Mint, wearing its image 
and superscription. But this is the exact reverse of com- 
mendation. Only that institution is true to its mission, 
which so develops and trains its students in harmony with 
their natural endowments that no marks of its own tools 
can be found upon them, — nothing seen but those seams 
that belonged to them when they lay imbedded in God’s 
quarry of souls. Its graduates stand forth in their original 
endowments with only this difference, that the germs of 
life and power in them have been educed. “ Hands off,” 
is our imperative mandate to any teacher who cannot so 
inspect the needs of his pupils as to discover their natural 
aptitudes and so train them as to develop their natural 
gifts. 

Is it objected, that if this be true, then it is to the peril 
of the pupil to be entrusted into the hands of any of our 
schools of learning ? I reply that while the peril exists, it 
can be so recognized and guarded against, as not to be 
fatally injurious. This danger is neutralized by making a 
most exacting and persistent use of the advantages of 
membership in that pre-existing and all-comprehending in- 
stitution of which I have spoken, and which I cannot un- 
duly extol, the University of Common Sense. Let the 
pupil be so imbued with the spirit and culture of this 
school of nature as to be proof against the self -annihilating 


24 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


tendencies of the conventional demands of the institution 
he enters. When will our schools of learning be delivered 
from the conception that the pupil is a piece of wood to be 
wrought into shape by following a pattern — a block of 
marble on which the chisels are to play until he takes the 
precise form of the model in hand ? Who of us have not 
seen graduates who are ghastly mutilations of what God 
intended ? bundles of artificialities, pieces of gorgeous 
patch- work, with forms of culture stuck upon the outside 
of them and dangling in the wind ; all the original fresh- 
ness and bloom and beauty of nature abstracted, and 
nothing conspicuously left but the marks of the tools of 
awkward and haggling teachers ? What is the trouble ? 
The answer is easy ; the student is not a piece of wood, or 
a block of marble, and the schoolroom is not a work-shop 
nor the studio of an artist. The student is a plant, and 
w T ants to develop by growth the nature that is in him, and 
the schoolroom is a garden. The teacher has to do with 
life, and his vocation is to develop that life by growth and 
according to the method which the law of that life has pre- 
ordained before the foundation of the world. All the pro- 
fessors in the University of Common Sense understand this, 
and act accordingly. They never aim at developing out 
of the student anything more or other than what God put 
into him. When teachers in the subordinate schools have 
the wisdom of these professors, and never attempt to do 
more than to push forward their work in a supplementary 
way, we shall see a revolution devoutly to be wished. 
When this educational millennium dawns, our schools of 
learning will graduate, not things, but men and women 
of flesh and blood, life and power, bloom and beauty — 
each student developed after the divine ideal as pre-deter- 
mined by the peculiar contents of his own soul. God 
never made two souls that are not dissimilar, and all the 
violent compressions of an educational enginery to make 
them identical, will only end in failure. But our educa- 
tional institutions are not more at fault than students them- 
selves. They ought to be possessed thoroughly of the con- 
viction that their future success depends not upon the in- 
stitution they have entered, but upon their own free choice 
and determined purpose. The school can be at best only a 
helper in the process of self-education. It often happens 
that the best part of the education a man has, he got before 
he went to college, and after he left. The multitude of 
persons whom we meet with, who have had fine educa- 


IN EDUCATION. 


25 


tional advantages, but who are almost failures in life, is a 
fact that ought to take the conceit out of those students 
who assume that because these advantages are theirs, 
therefore their success in life is assured. It commonly does 
not take a young man many years, after getting through 
his school studies, to find that his diploma is not a jolly- 
boat to float him through laughing waters to a position of 
eminence. As a sign of qualification for service, it may 
have a momentary value, but a ten minutes’ conversation 
may account it fit only for the waste basket. Without a 
man back of it, it is “as idle as a painted ship upon a 
painted ocean.” I repeat : the w T orld is inexorably severe 
in inspecting the man himself , and cares little as to what 
sort of machinery has been employed in making him. It 
is studious to kuow if he is always a student in the Uni- 
versity of Common Sense, and accepts its discipline, and 
follows its methods. 

The view here taken of education as an eduction of 
germs of life and power latent in the mind, is fitted to cor- 
rect a prevailing misapprehension as to what a practical 
education is. By this term is commonly meant that kind of 
knowledge that can be immediately used in some form of 
remunerative service. It lays the emphasis not upon the 
man himseiras'a befng of native capacities, and who is to 
be developed and empowered, but upon those outward 
and material appliances and possessions wherewith human 
life is improved in condition and made happier. It ex- 
presses the utilitarian spirit, which affirms that not man 
himself, but the means, the supplies and conveniences, by 
which he can have a competency and live a life of ease, is 
the end aimed at. “ I do not purpose to give my son an 
academical and classical education. I do not believe in 
the study of the dead languages and the abstruse mathe- 
matics — what is known as mental discipline and culture ; 
^ a pra ctical education, such as will prepare him for busi- 
ness, is what my son needs, and what I purpose to give 
him.” This form of utterance expresses a prevailing 
theory of education. It is the more hurtful because of the 
large amount of truth there is in it. While the distinction 
between what is called a theoretical education and a prac- 
tical education is not philosophically correct, it is yet suf- 
ficiently truthful to command popular recognition. We 
have nothing perfect in this world ; our religion is not ; 
either in its doctrinal systems or polities or the life. As 
there is a religion which is ascetic and detaches its posses- 


26 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


sor from the world, unfitting him for service in it ; as there 
is a religion that is aesthetic and elevates its possessor so 
far above the world that he would not deign to touch one 
of its burdens with one of his fingers ; as there is a religion 
that is sentimental and wastes itself in sympathetic yearn- 
ings over human suffering, and never springs to its relief 
in personal sacrifice ; so there is an education that takes 
different shapes, in any one of which, it so isolates its pos- 
sessor from the world as to be a positive disqualification for 
service in it. As religion has been often so brought into 
discredit by its endless perversions as to make natural 
morality more amiable in the comparison ; so education has 
often taken upon itself such forms, and put on such airs, 
stood in such isolation from the world’s needs in cold dis- 
dain and prudish conceits, as to exalt those forms of learn- 
ing which common sense imparts, in the comparison, into 
the third heavens. But it is unfair to judge of religion by 
its perverted forms ; it asserts the claim to be judged ac- 
cording to its true nature, and as it is when it appears at 
its best. We claim the same for education. Because it 
has been treated like the man on the w T ay to Jericho — 
fallen among thieves, who have stripped it of its essential 
glory, and left it half dead under piles of affectation, and 
stabbed to the heart by the cant of culture — I say, because 
this has been its misfortune, we ought not therefore to set 
it aside as having no determinate character of its own and 
as unworthy of our highest respect. I insist that educa- 
tion be conceived of as it is, relieved of all perverting ac- 
companiments and meretricious ornamentations, tracing it 
from its etymological significance : used in this sense, I 
claim that education, from beginning to end, and in toto, 
is practical. “ I speak as unto wise men, judge ye what 
I say.” Is not that education practical that develops a 
man’s capacity and that reduplic ates him ? lie has a body ; 
and ifTaTStTPaul commends, he is temperate in all things, 
and subjects it, as in preparation for Grecian games or the 
modern boat-race, to the most rigid discipline and training, 
will he not find his augmented physical power of practical 
service when he comes to use it in remunerative labor of 
whatsoever sort ? He has an intellect, and has it germs 
of power undeveloped ? Will it not be then of pracfaeaZ 
benefit if it be subjected to those forms of study and train- 
ing that will evoke its latent resources ? Is the wood- 
chopper grinding his axe, the athlete practising in the 
stadium, the eagle pluming his wings, wasting time and 


IN EDUCATION. 


27 


strength in needless preliminaries ? Was it an idle pas- 
time with Demosthenes when on the sea-shore, with pebbles 
in his mouth, he perfected his power as an orator ? Con- 
fessedly there is a great deal of misdirected labor on the 
farm ; hard work done at random, in a hit or miss way ; 
with a painful lack of good reasoning on given data ; and 
would it not be of great practical advantage to the hus- 
bandman, if, in exercising his judgment upon the endless 
questions that arise, he could bring to bear upon them a 
well-trained and discriminating mind ? Who of us can 
compute the cost of ignorance ? who count the difficulties 
that block our way and make life a drudgery, simply be- 
cause we do not have that mental drill and equipment 
which the decriers of disciplinary training have shouted 
themselves hoarse to induce us to neglect ? Nothing is 
more practical in effecting defeat in life, than this outcry 
against the practical worth of pure mental discipline. Out- 
side of moral guilt itself, there is no hallucination more 
criminally illogical and hurtful. Just so long as man- 
hood is a force of practical value in any man, whatever his 
business or profession, just so long must we account that 
education to be practical which augments and enriches it. 

Let this discussion rebuke two false and pernicious in- 
ferences. One is made when it is assumed that a young 
man is getting a good education because he enjoys excel- 
lent school advantages. This by no means follows. Many 
a young man is graduated from college very much less of 
a man, intellectually considered, then he was when he en- 
tered. His course in college can be best symbolized by 
that musical notation, called diminuendo — a lessening of 
volume from loud to soft. But let it be known that it is 
not what the young man gets at college that minimizes 
him ; it is what he does not get. He attains his profound 
descent by no aid from the college or its professors, but by 
his own full-nerved energy. Who of us have not heard 
students by the score justify their own inattentiveness to 
duty, by referring to men of note concerning whom there 
were traditions that they did not stand high in college ? 
just as though, imitating the foolish defects of these men, 
they were going to match their success and eminence in 
after years ! Our colleges are full of young Beechers : 
take no alarm ; it is all you will hear of them. It is be- 
cause our colleges are encumbered by students of this type, 
that they are brought so often, in popular apprehension, 
into disrepute. The college diploma is never of itself ac- 


28 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


counted sufficient : at its best estate, it only awakens a 
trembling hope. The sooner college students and others 
get this fact deposited in their heads the better for them 
and the world . 

Our discussion rebukes a second inference, drawn most 
cruelly by the multitudes, and especially by our young 
people, to this effect : that because they cannot go the round 
of the established methods of school training, therefore 
they are doomed to go uneducated, and pursue through 
life an unlionored walk : a most pernicious notion. The 
fact has beeiTsfafed ; we all live in a magnificent univer- 
sity, if we will so interpret and use the world w r e live in. 
Every object in nature and every event in life is a profes- 
sor’s chair in full occupancy. The stars are not “ gimlet 
holes ” bored to let the glory through ; they are teachers 
full of instruction. Every mountain, valley, tree and 
shrub; “the brooks that make the meadows green;” 
flow T ers arrayed in fragile glory, whose every petal is a pul- 
pit orator : these objects in nature, conjoined with the facts 
of science, philosophy, history, and art that attend them, 
constitute a Faculty of Instruction, by the side of which 
any Faculty in any University without them, is simply 
sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. The habit of fixed 
and prolonged attention to any subject, book, or treatise is 
invaluable, and can be acquired by any one with a little 
resolution. Accuracy, promptness, versatility, and force of 
mental action can be steadily increased by simply attend- 
ing to what is placed all the while before our eyes. ‘ ‘ A 
youth,” says President Gilman, “ who lias been taught to 
observe the phenomena of nature, who knows the aspects 
of the starry heavens, who welcomes ‘ the procession of 
the flowers’ from the Arbutus to the Asters, who knows 
the birds from their songs, who loves to chase the brilliant 
butterfly, who has watched the habits of the animals of 
the forests, who- has studied the star-fish and the jelly-fish 
in their seaboard homes, who has learned the rocks of the 
region where he dwells, who delights to climb the moun- 
tain and trace out the range of the ridges, the interlockings 
of the valleys, and the courses of the flowing waters — the 
youth who can thus hold ‘ communion with the outward 
forms of nature,’ has the foundation laid for a lifetime of 
culture, for an infinite variety of intellectual enjoyments.” 
This habit, too, carries him beyond the events of the day to 
those of past generations. It binds him into sympathy 
with his race. It repeats to him the lessons of sages and 


IN EDUCATION 


29 


prophets of old. He learns all things by heart. His 
memory is stored with proverbs and maxims and poems. 
He falls in love with truth — all truth — and partakes of her 
immortality and her beauty. He sees her everywhere and 
in all things. He cannot escape from her if he would. She 
illuminates the remotest star and the first-born of the ne- 
bulae. There is no obscurity which she does not penetrate, 
no height which she does not scale, no magnitude which 
she does not embrace. The thoughtful soul recognizes her 
omnipresence and becomes the repository of her behests. 
It has been said that marriage with a noble woman is itself 
a liberal education : how much more, then, when such 
wedlock is also a bridal union with all truth. “ She shall 
bring thee to honor, when thou dost embrace her.” I 
would be understood : I am not saying one word in a dis- 
paragement of academical and collegiate training : I am 
only insisting upon the opportunities and advantages ac- 
corded to those who are compelled to forego such train- 
ing ; and I say that these advantages and opportunities are 
simply huge ; that the people’s college opens to all, with- 
out money and without price, avenues to knowledge, dis- 
cipline, and culture, whereby all who will can attain to the 
highest intellectual and spiritual enjoyment. Let me not 
imply, in thus insisting, that these opportunities are wholly 
unheeded, that there is an utter waste of mind in our com- 
munities. There are multitudes of boys and girls, of 
youth of either sex, and persons of maturer years, found 
not only in our cities and larger towns, which are naturally 
educational centres, but in our country villages and rural 
districts, who are taking note of these things ; and, by the 
dint of personal effort, are acquiring a rich and noble cul- 
ture. Be assured that such youth are destined to exercise 
a dominant influence in their generation : they are to be 
the strength and stability of our American times — the fund 
of intelligent and conservative life back upon which our 
Republic must cast herself as the bulwark of her liberties 
and the condition of future glory. 

From what has been said, it is obvious that an education, 
however acquired, in this school or that school, or no 
school, imposes one condition, and that is an absolute one: 
it. is, hnrd'ninvk — This may be inferred from our defini- 
tion of education as an eduction of latent forces. It is born 
of discipline, and discipline requires hard study, and hard 
study is commonly distasteful. People recoil from mental 
exertion, and therefore repel books that tax the brain. 


30 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA 


“ Load our shoulders, fill our hands, play on our sensibili- 
ties, but don’t set us to thinking ; ” this is the demand. 
Says a leading publishing house in New York City : 
“ Three-fourths of the youth of our country are habitual 
readers of the dime-novel class of books ; but not one in 
fifty has any taste for the standard book. The trashy, 
sensational book sells by the tens of thousands, while the 
book ofscience, of history, of poetry, by the most popular 
authors, sells by the hundreds or by the thousands.” Why 
is this ? Not because they love trash ; but because they 
hate thought. They prefer to have skilful hands play on 
the strings of their sensibility rather than to read books that 
dislodge them from their mental indolence and force them to 
think. I ntellec tual l aziness is the prolific source of igncb_ 
ranee. The multitudes are not living uninformed and with- 
out discipline and culture, because they are debarred by cir- 
cumstance from our schools of learning ; it is because, in 
their aversion to intellectual labor, they debar themselves 
from the means and opportunities of knowledge and cul- 
ture placed within their reach. I have spoken of the 
University of Common Sense in which all the people are 
included ; but I must confess that it is over-patronized by 
hosts of people who are unworthy of these advantages. In 
their abuse of privilege in the institution they attend, they 
are forbidden, by every law of honor, to complain of stu- 
dents in our academies and colleges who are guilty of the 
same oifence. Let the common people desist from their 
favorite employment of throwing stones at our schools of 
learning because they contain students who misuse and 
abuse their opportunities, while they themselves are as 
really vulnerable for their neglect and disregard of oppor- 
tunity. Mental laziness is not now and then ; it is al- 
ways : it is not here and there ; it is omnipresent. Hence 
the universal demand upon authors of school books, and 
Sabbath-school books ; upon teachers of every grade of 
school, and upon preachers in the pulpit, to “explain, sim- 
plify, bring down, illustrate ; remember our minds are in- 
fantile, do our thinking for us, make our work easy.” A 
glance at our school books, at our Sabbath-school lit- 
erature and “helps over hard places”; at ninety-nine 
hundredths of the issues of the press, not to speak of the 
rollicking ditty or the sermonette we hear at church, is 
enough to show the concession that is made to this de- 
mand. 

Now this concession, ending in platitude as it com- 


IN EDUCATION. 


81 


monly does, is a crime. It is intellectual debauchery. It 
dooms society to a perpetual babyhood. Inspiration has 
thundered its decree against it : “ Butin understanding, be 
men.” It requires some effort for a child to masticate and 
swallow its food ; but what would you think of that 
mother, who on this account, should eat the child’s food 
for it ? But such a procedure would be no more irrational 
or carry in it a greater cruelty than those authors and 
teachers and preachers evince who so condescend to per- 
sons of low estate as to do for them what their Maker or- 
dained that they should do for themselves. Very many 
teachers in all posts of service, seem to be doing their -work 
under the impression that the more they help their scholars, 
and boost up, and boost them in, and boost them through 
or over their studies, the better. This is not blunder ; it 
is crime. It causes each great science 

“ in the student’s pace 

To stand like a wicket in a hurdle race, 

Which to o’erleap is all the courser’s mind, 

And all his glory that ’tis left behind.” 

People are not to be treated as in the objective case : 
they are co-ordinate nominatives with their teachers, and 
stand upon the same footing as intelligent thinkers. Teach- 
ing is intellectual companionship ; the contact of living 
mind with living mind. It is not so much knowledge that 
people need as inspiration. No teacher is fit for his calling 
whose knowledge has not inspired him, and whose inspi- 
ration is not contagious. Ignorant mind is mind in a de- 
cline, and it needs the tonic of a stimulating teacher. It 
must be won to think, to think consecutively and to think 
hard ; and the very difficulties to be encountered and van- 
quished are the ordained instruments for this work. There- 
fore for teachers to remove these difficulties instead of in- 
spiring the pupil to do it, is for them to throw away the 
tools wherewith their work is to be done ; it is to withhold 
the meat on which their pupil must grow ; it is to pros- 
trate the ladder on whose celestial rounds they are to 
mount ; it is to make the watchword of the school-room — 
Excelsior — “a hollow word as though a dead man spake 
it.” 

What would you think of a farmer, who, needing a 
grindstone, should purchase a cheese ? Getting it home 
and adjusting it in its place, he sets his boy to turning it. 
He brings on his axe or scythe and applies it to the revolv- 
ing instrument. To his surprise, instead of taking away 


32 


THE DISTINCTIVE IDEA. 


from the tool and bringing it to an edge, it adds to it of its 
own substance, turning it into cheese. What is the 
trouble ? The grindstone does not grind, for the want of 
texture or grit. Now a good school is not wholly unlike a 
grindstone of genuine quality ; and he is the good teacher 
who takes his pupil in both hands and holds him down 
hard and long upon the swift-rolling stone until he is 
worked down, and brought into shape, and has a sharp 
edge set upon him and is thus fitted for service. If you 
grind a boy on cheese, he is cheese ; and that is the end of 
him. 

Education, then, is secured at the cost of hard study •„ 
hard study, then, is not to be accounted a curse, but hailed 
as a boon. Woe to that policy, so popular in certain 
quarters, that comes to the relief of intellectual laziness. 
The modern device of elective studies in our colleges is 
largely a concession to the distaste of students, not to this 
study or that, but to hard study. Nothing is more 
ludicrous than the spectacle of a college Freshman or 
Sophomore, hunting in his catalogue for studies fitted to 
the peculiar bent of his genius. The phrase “bent of 
genius ” or “ natural aptitude,” is a pack-horse for an in 
finite deal of laziness. It is supposed to be a reverent way 
of holding God responsible for a shirk. Do we not know 
as we know the sun light, that in the elective system, those 
studies are selected that are accounted the easiest and that 
thereby a premium is placed upon mental indolence? and do 
we not know that in the majority of instances, those studies 
which are evaded are the very ones required to tighten 
“ the loose screws,” and to give a rounded completeness 
to the students’ manhood ? It is a question yet unsettled 
whether our colleges with their crowded curricula and 
elective studies, are to yield such products in man as did 
the English Universities a century ago, when the entile 
discipline consisted in the mastery of eight or ten authors. 

Be this as it may, we reaffirm the position, that the dis 
tinctive idea of an education is not to increase what a man 
knows, but to augment what a man is. 



































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